


Hopeful Hearts Are Moving Targets

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope - or happiness - is seldom a tangible thing in Panem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hopeful Hearts Are Moving Targets

**Author's Note:**

> General (with tones of Peeta/Katniss) Hunger Games fic, prompted by a friend to try and write something happy for this fandom. I didn't exactly succeed, but I wrote a fic, all the same.

Sun filters down through the air besmirched with heavy coal dust, down to a small, sleeping girl. She is curled up next to her mother, both of them buried in an array of dirty sheets. The girl, the same as her mother, has light, blonde hair and shiny blue eyes. The girl, the same as her mother, has cried recently. From eye to cheek, where rivers had once run their course, now lie dry river-beds, unattended to in sleep.

The mother had cried (as quietly as possible) for her husband, lost many miles down underground. She also feels lost - she feels hollow. It is an effort to get out of bed; it is an effort to breathe. It is as if something lies within her rib-cage, constricting her lungs and constricting her happiness.

The girl had cried (quietly, because she was not capable of more) because she'd had a nightmare. She was only young; these things were expected, especially if you lived in somewhere like District 12. In the nightmare, her sister and mother had disappeared, just like her father had done the day he never came back from the mines. In reality, he'd died - but the girl is innocent, and unlike her sister, cannot imagine death, cannot paint that picture in her mind, even though she's seen it countless times on a television screen.

So she had woken up, panicked, heart thumping loudly against a malnourished ribcage. She had frantically turned her head to left and right, and seen her family. She had quickly climbed into her mother's bed, pressed herself against the residual warmth, and bad thoughts easily quelled, gone back to sleep.

But now it is morning, and the sun warms up their bed and blankets quicker than bread can disappear off of a Seam table. The girl wakes slowly to a miniature oven, fingers outstretched and clutching her pillow in a deft grasp, as if she is hugging it.

The girl does not notice her sister, Katniss, sitting off in the corner of the room, watching them. Her face is stone blank, but she is anxious, reading her mother's movements (as well as the lack of them). Katniss is hoping that this morning, unlike the past two weeks, her mother will get out of bed.

The girl -- called Prim -- is now awake, and her eyes drink in the sunlight. Her lips twitch in a smile, and it is as if she does not have a care in the world. Considering her position, her life, she still has a firm grasp on her innocence, and is not even aware that there is anything but. Prim rolls over, brushing the sheets off her mother's figure as she kneels on knobbly knees. Prim likes pretending to be a maternal figure who can do anything - an imitation of what Katniss is to her, and what her mother once was, before their father was disintegrated.

When her mother's eyes flick open, they are as wide and as frightened as a hunted deer. Prim does not see this - Katniss does. Katniss poises, ready to whisk Prim away in a second, to make sure that Prim does not see how utterly gone their mother is, and how, in Katniss's eyes, she has left them, as effectively as their father has. But this does not happen. Prim darts in and plants a kiss on her mother's cheek. It is not a good kiss; the morning has taken all the moisture from the girl's mouth, and her lips are rough and scratchy on skin.

Prim offers her mother a hand, and stands up, her weight barely making the bed sag down where her feet are planted. To Katniss's surprise, after long minutes where all she can bear to notice is the black coal dust shimmering in the sun, their mother takes Prim's hand. She sits up. The significance of this is lost on Prim, but she rewards her mother, all the same. They hug gently in the morning light, empty frames and shoulders clacking together, hollows matching like a jigsaw puzzle.

They are not whole; they are hungry, they are missing a family member, they are missing a life without fear. But Prim is too young to know all this, and Katniss, sitting in the corner, is hopeful that when Prim is old enough to learn, they will be gone, long gone from this place. And then, their mother will walk around and cook and clean and laugh, and perhaps, Katniss will sing.

Then, the three of them will think of Mr. Everdeen, and they will cry. But it will be happy. It will.

 

****

 

Rain trickles down through the rocks, making steady dripping noises on their dirt floor. The incessant downpour gives the impression that the heavens have opened up and are weeping. Peeta imagines, that back in the Capitol, for District 12's star-crossed lovers, they actually are.

The idea, at the back of his mind, is slightly disconcerting, but his happiness at a dream, an eleven year long dream come true, overrules this. It overrules everything - the fact that he is a pawn in a game that ultimately, is killing 23 children a year, that he had been so close to death's door he'd had both foot on the doormat.

He leans close to Katniss as the two of them sit, looking out at the river in front of their cave. Her features are sharp and angular from hunger, and the strangeness invites him - but what about her doesn't?- and he presses his lips to hers. He lifts his arms up, brings them running through her hair, fishing it out of what has become her trademark braid.

She leans back, and it is bittersweet, because he wants more, but there are other things to think about. They are hungry, desperately hungry, and Cato, Thresh and Foxface are still alive.

Peeta likes Katniss's nickname of Foxface for their fellow tribute. It is an accurate depiction, and it makes something like pride swell up inside of him - because he stupidly, cannot not be absolutely entrapped or enchanted by anything Katniss Everdeen does, even something minor and insignificant like make up a nickname.

From what she has told him, Katniss has been a fierce and viable competitor in the Games so far. She's been legendary with a bow and arrow; she's gone to the feast, she's blown up the Career's food supplies. She's killed, drawn blood with bow and arrow, cut trackerjacker nests. Maybe they have hope. With her being Katniss, her being wonderful, and him now healthy, they could do it.

He says this out loud. She smiles. They kiss.

Maybe, maybe, he thinks, everything will be alright. With Katniss, everything almost is.

 

***

 

Salty water pours down on Katniss's face. She should be strong, she has been strong, but this -- she cannot take.

President Snow lies dead at her feet, his chest torn open, ribs broken like a ruined xylophone. She hadn't thought that he'd have flesh and blood (despite smelling like it) because he was so inhuman, but after running her knife up and down his body, her speculation was obviously untrue.

She is disgusted by her handiwork, and she thinks that upon release, she has finally been turned into a monster by his cruel regime.

But it's gone now. It's gone. She sobs, she weeps, she shrieks. This is not how she imagined the defeat of the Capitol. She is not happy.

Childishly, petulantly, in the back of her mind, she hopes, that some day, she will be.


End file.
